To love and to hide

Laura Wilson was just 17-years-old when she was stabbed to death next to a canal in Rotherham, Manchester in 2010.

This wasn't a mugging gone wrong, or a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, the mother-of-one was the victim of Britain's first white honour killing. Her death was premeditated murder, plotted and committed by the boyfriend she was madly in love with.

Laura's crime was to bring dishonour on her muslim lover Ashtiaq Ashgar, 21, who is now serving a life sentence for the brutal murder.

In 2008, the couple began an intense relationship at school when Laura was just 15, and Ashtiaq, 16.

Her sister, Sarah, reveals on tonight's episode of Britain's Darkest Taboos on Crime & Investigation Network: 'She loved him. She worshipped the ground he walked on, she really did. She would have done anything for him.'

Ashtiaq came from a traditional Muslim family who were planning an arranged marriage for their son with a girl from Pakistan.

They would have been horrified to learn he was dating a white girl so he made Laura keep their relationship a secret.

Unbeknown to his family, he lived a double life where he drank, smoked cannabis, carried weapons and had numerous relationship with women, including Laura.

When Laura found out that he has been seeing other girls, they broke up and she slept with this married friend, 22-year-old Ishaq 'Zac' Hussein, to make him jealous.

Only 16, she fell pregnant as a result of the fling and had a daughter, Alicia. Zac refused to acknowledge he was the father.

After Alicia is born, Laura and Ashtiaq rekindle their relationship but he insists it must continue to be a secret. But while Laura was very much in love, her mother, Maggie, believes Ashtiaq was just using Laura for sex and treated her badly.

She said: 'I heard a phone conversation between Laura and Ashtiaq, Laura telling him how much he loved him and he were just so nasty. You could hear Laura crying in the background. He was saying just how much he hated her and that he'd got another girl, and he wasn't interested in her and she's shouting back "I love ya, I love ya…". He used Laura I think at end.'

Laura soon became sick of being Ashtiaq secret's and on October 6 2010, fuelled by alcohol, she and her sister made the fatal mistake of revealing all to his family.

They knocked on his mother's door and told her what was going on. 

Sarah recalls: 'Laura told her that she wanted to marry him, but his mother got aggressive and hit her with a shoe, calling her "a dirty white b****".'

The whole time Ashtiaq stood behind his mother 'acting sheepish'. 

The public episode would have been deeply shameful and embarrassing to him.

On a roll, Laura and Sarah also visited Zac's family to reveal how he is the father of her baby.

Maggie recalls: 'She said "I am sick of her being a secret" as she had been told not to mention about Alicia to any of family. So she told them but they just didn’t want to know.'

Maggie added that Laura's relations with Ashtiaq and Zac had 'fetched shame on their family… she had to be stopped.'

In the days following Sarah and Laura turning up at their houses, an angry Ashtiaq sent Zac a text message saying: 'I'm gonna send that b***** to hell.'

He also said he wanted to make 'beans on toast' of her, which actually means 'spill blood'.

He asked Laura to meet him at the canal one evening and its there that he brutally murdered her.

Source: Dailymail